The Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in Springfield, Massachusetts, was just about finished with a $24 million renovation when the virus pandemic hit.
As part of the state's phased reopening plan, the Hall opened its doors to the public Wednesday for the first time in five months.
John Doleva, President and CEO of the Hall of Fame, said the enshrinement ceremony for the class of 2020 is tentatively scheduled for October. But he said that may be postponed to early 2021 due to the pandemic.
Doleva said safety protocols are in place at the Hall, including spaced seating in the theater and disposable stylus pens for touch screens.
John Doleva, Basketball Hall of Fame: It used to be you would think about going to see a museum like ours, and you'd say, well, well, what's in it? How much does it cost? How far is it from my house? Is my family going to have a good time?
But what's risen to the top of that list is: is my family going to be safe? Are we going to be protected? Is the museum or the attraction doing everything that it can to diminish the potential transmission of any COVID virus?
And I think in our case, with 20 different checkpoints here, we are making every best effort to do just that and make people feel safe. So we're prepared. We're constantly in motion cleaning, and we have your health and safety in mind, first and foremost.
Kari Njiiri, NEPM: What other changes will visitors see?
In the old museum, we were just at the cusp of the digital age, and a lot of written word, some photographs and a decent amount of artifacts. Visitors now will see a museum where the content — a lot of it is digital — where you're able to literally dig into someone's past to discover more about a Hall-of-Famer.
And the story I like to use is you might be taking your child or grandchild through in the old style museum. You might say, well, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, he was the best center of all time. And you would look at a picture — basically a black-and-white picture — up on the dome. And then you'd read two-and-a-half paragraphs of information.
A 12- or 13-year-old child isn't going to take much away from that. In a new style, we are able to provide an experience whereby that same father or grandparent can take that child up, and hit a touch screen, and see the biography of Kareem — but also video of Kareem playing high school ball at Power Memorial, video of Kareem with John Wooden at UCLA winning a championship.
We have his rookie year with the Milwaukee Bucks when he was Rookie of the Year, his years with the Lakers winning championships.
So when you say as a parent, a grandparent, he was the greatest center of all time — and still, by the way, holds the scoring record in the NBA — that younger person can say, absolutely, I saw Kareem when he was about my age, 17, playing basketball, and when he won championships, and when he broke the scoring record. So you're really getting a deep, deep dive.
That's just one example of, really, how we are providing much more entertainment and education about Hall-of-Famers, and great basketball moments.
Since the new year, two notable figures in the game have died — former NBA commissioner David Stern, and Kobe Bryant. How are they being remembered?
This was the year Kobe was to be enshrined. So we came into January before Kobe passed away, and we were looking at an enshrinement ceremony that Tim Duncan and Kevin Garnett and Kobe Bryant, just for starters — it would have been the biggest and still will be the biggest — but would have been the biggest, with Kobe living — enshrinement that we would ever have.
We will have a separate exhibit on Kobe that is being finished up over the next couple of weeks. David Stern, of course, being a Hall-of-Famer, will be remembered in the Hall of Honor.
So, again, that deep dive into what he contributed to the growth of the game around the world. Really, I mean, every Hall-of-Famer has gotten a much broader representation.
